


Even to the edge of doom

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: F/M, Humor, Reunions, Romance, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:12:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd expected everything to remain the same, like a beetle caught in amber.





	1. Chapter 1

Emma had been called home to help tend to her mother’s illness in terms she knew she could not refuse, even if she had been so inclined. Alice was useless in a sickroom and Belinda had less time for the Green family since she had her own household to manage as well as the kitchens of Mansion House, so Emma was fully occupied for the two weeks she was away from the hospital, with hardly a moment to respond to the thoughtful note Mrs. Foster had sent, equal parts reassurance and praise with a dash of her friend’s humor in the closing lines “do not hurry but know how welcome another will be to rejoin the ranks of Miss Hastings’s ‘disappointments.’” She had seen her mother through the worst of it and had weaned her dose of laudanum as much as she dared, but it was past time for her to return to her duty to the soldiers, her vocation, and her personal concerns and she fancied she had slipped back into the rhythm of the place as easily as she would have joined the waltz at a ball.

She had not seen much of Henry yet but the wards were crowded and she had been pleased to see his request for another chaplain to work beside him had been answered, for there was a man she did not recognize at the other end of the room, tall and dark and neatly dressed in the same sober garb that was the sign of a minister and not a physician or soldier. She had finished changing the dressing on a man old enough to be her father, far too old to fight she would have thought though she knew enough not to say it, and decided she must greet the new member of the staff and make him welcome.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but we’ve not yet been introduced,” she began, standing a few steps away to try and convey some sense of propriety. There was something odd about the moment though, that she could not place and then, at once, she exclaimed,

“Heavens, Henry! What have you done?”

“I gather you don’t care for it?” he replied, stroking the full, dark beard that made him another man altogether, with a gravity that belied his years and yet a nearly piratical air when she looked into his bright eyes, noticed the gleam of his white teeth.

“I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t say that exactly,” she said, stumbling a bit over the words, trying to decide how she did feel truly and if she could bring herself to say it aloud.

“What would you say then?” he countered, lively in a way he had not been in some time, more confident as she was less so.

“I suppose it suits you,” she replied. She could not keep from thinking of evenings spent giggling with her friends as they imagined what it must be like to be kissed by a man with a beard, how it would tickle or annoy. She had declared she’d only marry a clean-shaven man to the giddy amusement of Priscilla and Martha and she hadn’t thought twice about it since.

“That doesn’t mean you like it,” he said, looking at her intently. “If you don’t…”

“What difference should that make?” she asked quickly, reminding herself they stood surrounded by sick men, that this was not a private parlor or even the ballroom at Mrs. Bennett’s where such a flirtation might be embarked upon. She saw Henry was not so concerned with where they were but only with her response and she held up a hand in a gesture to make him pause.

“Don’t answer me. At least, not here…not now,” she said, hearing how her voice went soft at the end, seeing his face transformed again, no longer the solemn reverend or roguish sea-captain but another man, one who might easily call her _Mrs. Hopkins_ with a warm smile.

“Later then. Whenever you wish. You’ve been missed here,” he replied. “You may be busy a while,” he added.

“For a while perhaps. Not too busy—and I shan’t be mistaken about who I’m speaking to again,” she said. 

“I hope not,” he said. “I’ve no intention of any other alteration.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mary had a talent for domesticity. Jed was eager to return home every night as he had never been during his first marriage and not only to indulge in his desire for her caresses, which she had laughingly declared insatiable before offering her pursed lips in another kiss; now, his house was less richly decorated but the ornaments were more thoughtfully chosen and artfully arranged and Mary spent every penny he thought to see realized in millinery to stock their own glass-fronted bookcases and create a sort of lending library for the contraband. The menu was limited by the War but she and Julia and Keturah contrived plentiful meals which were spiced by her small kitchen garden and she had insisted that an abundance of white muslin curtains would make the house fresh and more inviting than more fashionable velvet portieres. There were flowers on the polished dining table and a small posy kept on the bedside table. She had been sure to spend her day largely in the service of others—in the work she still did at Mansion House, biting her tongue as Anne’s subordinate, more happily as Charlotte’s deputy in the camp, managing the members of her own household so that they were all thriving and somehow would have read the next chapter in her latest mathematics text. She would tell him all of it in the twilit parlor after supper in exchange for his stories of diagnosis and procedures, how mightily he had restrained himself from throttling Hale, again, how well the latest medical cadet was proceeding, “a far cry from your Mr. Squivers, May, though I know you won’t admit it.”

“Admit what, Jedediah? I should admit nothing to you—he was neither _my_ Mr. Squivers nor so deficient as you supposed. Rather, you should admit to me what kept you so late tonight. If I had made a meat pie as I had planned, the pastry would not have stood your tardiness,” she retorted.

“My apologies—for keeping you waiting and the dinner. It was Henry, you see,” he replied, sipping from the cup of chicory she’d poured him. He’d never cared for it but found it tolerable when there were Mary’s dark eyes to regard over the cup’s rim.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked. Henry had three sisters of his own in Massachusetts but it seemed he was made for the role, as Mary had adopted him as her brother shortly after her arrival and still played mother hen with him as much as he’d allow. Jed could not find it within himself to be jealous, for she loved him so well and with such honest intensity, how she cared for Henry seemed only to be the least bit of the affection she was capable of. 

“I don’t think so. Miss Green returned today and found him somewhat altered, as you can imagine,” Jed replied.

“Yes, I can see she would,” Mary said.

“Evidently, she found him unrecognizable and began to introduce herself as to a stranger. She thought he was the new assistant chaplain,” Jed explain.

“Oh dear! Was he much distressed over it?” Mary asked. He liked that she was not occupying herself with anything but their conversation. Eliza had used to work at a tapestry frame in the evening and had never given him her full attention but Mary had told him she did the mending because she must but otherwise found needlework tedious. Her hands were either busy with the chicory and sweets or folded in her lap—unless she had chosen to sit beside him, in which case, they would be entwined with his and a welcome distraction from any discussion.

“You know how he is, so yes, but unwilling to show it. He did say he had misgivings—that scamp little Joe in the contraband camp asked him whether he had a raccoon on his face he said and then Emma’s response was not what he’d expected either,” Jed said, chuckling a little at the memory of Henry’s own mixture of anxiety and self-deprecation, the pleasure he’d taken in getting the attention of the little boy and how disconcerted he’d been at first by Emma’s confusion.

“Poor Henry! Clever little Joe’s gotten the best of everyone in the whole camp, he should count himself in good company,” Mary said.

“I think Henry was more concerned about Emma. About a woman’s perspective,” Jed offered. Mary only waited, understanding there was more to come.

“He asked me if you minded my beard,” Jed added, striving to keep his tone even and his face straight.

“He asked if I minded your beard? For goodness sakes! What ever did you say?” Mary was surprised but Jed could tell she was not offended so much as amused and embarrassed. She had colored, quite prettily, and he thought of what he had not said to Henry—how very pleased Mary was with his beard, the deliciously soft sound she made when he kissed her bare back and brushed his face against her skin, how often her hand went to his cheek to cup his jaw and stroke his whiskers, how she pressed her thighs against his face as he licked and nuzzled his way to her sweetly parted flesh, how she rubbed her cheek against his afterwards, both of them drunk on the scent of her delight on him. If he had shared even the slightest intimation, he thought Henry would have fallen to the ground in a dead faint, and though he had once been as blithely jovial about discussing women with other men, he found he had no desire whatsoever to disclose any part of his intimacy with his wife, not even reconfigured as some kindly reassurance. He decided to tell her the truth in such a way to make her smile and scold.

“I told him you had not made the least complaint about any aspect of my person since we were wed,” he said, far more formally than he had actually said to Henry, but he accomplished his goal when he saw Mary wrinkle her nose and prepare her rejoinder.

“So, you lied,” she said neatly. “Ah well, the honeymoon had to end sometime.” She sighed dramatically then, to make sure he knew she teased him.

“Now who is the liar?” he said, gesturing for her to come and sit by him. She did, without any delay or pouting, and he put his arm around her waist to draw her close.

“You might have said I was very fond of you and that includes your beard,” she said, reaching up a hand to stroke the whiskers in question. He turned his head to he caught her fingertips with his lips for a brief kiss.

“It would have been the truth, yes, but not what he needed to hear, don’t you think? I told him it seemed to me Emma would let him know if there was a problem with his appearance and I might have suggested that she would be a safe bet to hold a knife to his throat if he needed help shaving,” Jed said.

“Did you really?” Mary said, laughing as Jed had laughed at Henry’s face, half-stricken, half-intrigued, the man’s blue eyes black with irises that had blown wide at the vision Jed invoked. 

“Well, I wanted to come home to you, didn’t I? And I didn’t want to stand there all night talking about Henry’s overgrown mutton-chops when you were waiting for me here,” he said, breathing in the fragrance of her throat, lavender and violet and May, the May who was his alone.

“Good. I didn’t want to wait all night,” she murmured. “That’s what I would have minded, but don’t you dare tell Henry that.”

“It would never occur to me, sweetheart,” he muttered. “There are lies of omission and commission and I’m prepared to tell them all for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just thought everyone would get a kick out of Henry-with-a-beard and Emma mildly flipping out about it. It's a grey, rainy day after another grey, rainy day and tomorrow promises to be another. Don't we all deserve a little entertaining pirate Hopkins?
> 
> Title is from Shakespeare-- I daresay you can figure out which sonnet :)


End file.
